These are the notes for the first of four webinars on "Engaging students in the online environment", starting Wednesday, 20 January, 11 am AEDT Sydney time (Tuesday, January 19, 5 pm MST in Edmonton). Please register now for the first webinar and send your suggestions.
What have we learned from teaching online in 2020 due to COVID-19?
These are the notes to accompany the Powerpoint/PDF presentation:
In early 2020, like many in higher education, I had to flip to teaching online at the Australian National University. First I had to help teach 100 tutors how to teach, including some tips on online teaching. Then I had to adapt my "Learning to Reflect" module for 200 computer project students. During the year I also mentored and coached hackerthons online, including for the New Zealand and Australian Defence Forces. In reviewing my 196 blog posts from 2020, here are some of the lessons learned:
In early 2020, like many in higher education, I had to flip to teaching online at the Australian National University. First I had to help teach 100 tutors how to teach, including some tips on online teaching. Then I had to adapt my "Learning to Reflect" module for 200 computer project students. During the year I also mentored and coached hackerthons online, including for the New Zealand and Australian Defence Forces. In reviewing my 196 blog posts from 2020, here are some of the lessons learned:
Provide Online Social Contact for Students and Staff: As an online student I had experienced crushing loneliness. After evacuating the campus in 2020 and being isolated at home alone, that experience reoccurred. Video based events for staff and students proved very important. These had to have some form of work focus to give a sense of legitimacy, but it was more the sense of coming together which was important.
ASCILITE ML SIG video meeting
Be prepared for emergencies: My last job at the Department of Defence had to been prevent and if necessary, respond to a global emergency due to Y2K. Having helped with disaster management systems since then I have a better idea of what is needed. The Australian National University (ANU) had suffered several natural disasters in the previous decade (including a hailstorm in January, a flood and bush-fire) and so had procedures in place. While these were not specifically for a pandemic, they were a good start.
Hail at ANU, January 2020.
Image credit: ANU
Learn Online to Teach Online: When asked if I could teach international students online, I was able to confidently say yes, as I had been an international student, learning how to teach online. Not only had I learned the theory, I had experienced it myself and so had some idea what the students would be going though. It was this confidence which was important, rather than the details of techniques. The ANU put in place a team last year to help academics with teaching and that proved invaluable as the core of the COVID-19 teaching response.
Tom Worthington MEd (DE),
Athabasca University 2017
Design New Courses for Online Delivery and Adapt for F2F: Existing learning management systems, such as Moodle, proved very effective. Existing course content was able to be easily adapted for online delivery. The lesson for the future is to first prepare to deliver online and then add options for face to face. Also have flexible classrooms which can be quickly reconfigured for different teaching styles, and seating densities. An example is the award winning Marie Reay Teaching Centre at the Australian National University.
Marie Reay Teaching Centre,
Australian National University
Some 2020 in Blog Posts
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| Preparing web pages for Defence Exercise K95 |
ps: The photo is from when I was at Mallacoota in 1995, preparing web pages for a military exercise.
Wednesday, January 8, 2020
What Skills and Knowledge do Tutors Need?
I was asked to help with training of university tutors for computer science and engineering. So I looked at some of the training materials used around the world. But what do tutors need to know and be able to do? The term "tutor" is used by Australian universities for casual contract staff, usually later year undergraduates, and graduate students, who teach small groups (tutorials, or workshops), or supervise in a laboratory. In the USA these are referred to as Graduate Teaching Assistants, or just Teaching Assistants, and are usually PhD students.For simplicity, I will use the term tutors.
Tutors may take on many roles, apart from teaching small groups, including giving lectures and in some cases running whole courses (under the supervision of a Professor). However, my interest here is in what a beginning tutor, who has been asked to supervise a small class needs to know and be able to do.
Tutors may take on many roles, apart from teaching small groups, including giving lectures and in some cases running whole courses (under the supervision of a Professor). However, my interest here is in what a beginning tutor, who has been asked to supervise a small class needs to know and be able to do.
It was not until late January that a virus in China became an issue for Australian higher education.Around this time I was called to a meeting of ANU staff where we were asked could we teach students, mostly in China, unable to get to campus, online. As I had studied this specify topic in my graduate courses, I was confident we could. However, I was worried that the situation was not being taken sufficiently seriously by other institutions So I issued a call for institutions be prepared to implement e-learning on a large scale:
Monday, January 27, 2020
Educational Institutions Could Offer Blended Learning in Response to Novel Coronavirus
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| NUS eLearning Week Video, 2014 |
Friday, February 7, 2020
Ten Tips for Quickly Converting Courses for Online Delivery
Yesterday I was asked for some tips on how to provide courses for online delivery, for students who are unable to get to class due to the Novel Coronavirus. Here are ten tips (plus a video), added to those previously provided.
Since the COVID-19 Coronavirus started causing difficulties for Australian education a few weeks ago, I have lost track of the number of emergency meetings, and written thousands of words of advice on how to change to e-learning. Here is an attempt to sum up what to do in five words "KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON-LINE".
- Don't panic: Courses have been delivered online by universities around the world for decades. This includes the Green Computing Course from Computer Science at ANU since 2009 (also offered by Athabasca University in Canada). ANU has a series of short Coffee Courses on how to do this.
- Focus on student communication, not content: I spent three years as a postgraduate international online student, learning how to provide online education from Australia to China and India. While there were frustrations with ebooks and videos, the major problem was the crushing loneliness. Being an online student amplifies all the worries students have at the best of times, and these are not the best of times. We need to give students the sense there is someone out there worrying about them. Also, we need to encourage them to communicate with each other. You can build such teacher-to-student and student-to-student communication in as part of a course.
It is Not About Video: The easiest, but least important thing you can do, is to convert face-to-face lectures to recorded video. Students like having recorded video lectures available. However, don't waste time making high-quality videos: it makes no difference to learning. Provided students see a still image of you occasionally, you do not have to appear in the video lectures: powerpoint slides with audio are fine. Unedited recordings of live lectures are also okay. For the "Learning to Reflect" module of ANU TechLauncher last year, I used video automatically created from the course notes, with a synthetic voice.
Text-Based Notes Are Key: Provide students with notes detailing what they have to do, and when they have to do it. Ideally, provide this all at the beginning of the course. You will be sending them reminders and updates, but students feel more secure if they have everything at the start. My preference is an e-book, but the format doesn't matter as much as the student being able to download everything, easily.
eBook for Green Computing Course - Target Smartphones: Students are increasingly using smartphones for study, so make sure your material is suitable. Learning Management Systems, such as Moodle, now supports smartphones, but make sure the formatting you use does not stop this working.
- Prompt students to study: Students will be distracted and so you need to tell them what to do, and when to do it. Don't assume the student can find the relevant material, or resource: give them a link directly to what you want them to look at. You can start with subtle nudges, such as "Thank you to the 49 students who have already completed the quiz", them more direct: "You have until 1 pm Canberra time, to complete the quiz, for 1% of your grade". Peer pressure, and marks, are very effective ways to motivate students.
- Rationalize assessment: Consider what assessment you can reliably deliver online, and in what size chunks. Are you providing the assessment for formative purposes, to help with study, for summative purposes (the final grade), or both? Consider simple short assessment items and make them easier to mark. Make use of the automated assessment delivery and marking options built into the Learning Management System. I particularly like short regular quizzes (with questions drawn from a bank at random, to make it harder to cheat).
- Provide Asynchronous Communication, Supplemented by Synchronous: I was an online graduate student of education for seven years. Of thousands of hours of study, only a couple of hours were real-time (synchronous) communication with a teacher or other students. Most communication for online courses is asynchronous: you post a message and someone reads it later. This is partly due to the difficulties of getting people together at the same time. It is also due to inevitable problems with online communication. So focus on the asynchronous posts to forums. These can be supplemented with short video recordings. If you have the resources, then add some live webinars, but record these sessions, for those who can't attend.
- Use the tools your colleagues use: Educational institutions provide learning management systems, video recording, webinar, and other tools for online teaching. There may also be other tools in use by your colleagues. These may not be the best tools, but you can get help with them, so it should be your first choice.
- Look after yourself and colleagues: Burnout of online teachers is very common. Online students expect instant replies from staff 24 hours a day, and can be scathing in their criticism. Give students reasonable expectations of how quickly they will receive a reply and ensure there are sufficient staff to do this. Try to answer common questions via a forum, rather that to each student individually. Do not reply to intemperate language from a student in haste, or anger.
By the end of February, a note of panic had crept into my posts:
Thursday, February 27, 2020
Educators Need to Plan for Infectious Disease Outbreak
This is to suggest educational institutions revise, or create, their Infectious Disease Outbreak Response Plan, now. Australian universities, vocational education and some schools have already had to make arrangements for international students who have been unable to get to campus due to the COVID-19 Coronavirus travel restrictions. However, much more may need to be done in the coming months, with remote education provided to students across Australia, on a scale not seen before. ...
Monday, March 2, 2020
Conference Organizers Need to Plan for Infectious Disease Outbreak
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| Tom Worthington speaking at NITC 2018 |
Those organizing international conferences in the next few months need to have a blended, or fully online, option available, due to COVID-19 Coronavirus restrictions. One option is to offer venues distributed around the world, which delegates can travel to locally. They will be able to interact face to face with colleagues. They can participate in local presentations face-to-face, and those from other venues via a video link. The moderator at the speaker's venue can relay questions submitted thorough the conference's chat facility, and queue audio questions. ...
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON-LINE
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| Poster generated using Keep Calms. |
Some in academia were still in a state of denial, so I suggested how to keep assessment going:
Friday, March 13, 2020
Don't Postpone Examinations: Replace Them With Realistic Tests
Media reports indicate that some universities are postponing examinations due to the about the COVID-19 Coronavirus. Unfortunately this emergency will not be over quickly, so this is not an effective strategy. ...
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